The present invention relates to a video-signal recording & playback apparatus, a video-signal recording & playback method and a recording medium. More particularly, the present invention relates to a video-signal recording & playback apparatus suitable for a case in which a recommended position to a start an operation to playback a video signal from a recording medium is also recorded into a recording medium in an operation to record a video signal into the recording medium, relates to a video-signal recording & playback method adopted in the video-signal recording & playback apparatus and relates to a recording medium for recording a procedure for implementing the video-signal recording & playback method.
In order to allow the user to grasp the contents of a program recorded on a recording medium or the contents of a group of such programs, or in order to search such a recording medium for a program, there is provided a method whereby a plurality of shrunk static pictures or moving pictures each representing a program or a scene is displayed on a screen and the user is allowed to specify one of the displayed pictures in order to select a desired program or a desired scene of a program.
Conventionally, pictures each representing a program or a scene are each obtained right after the beginning of a program or extracted at fixed intervals.
By the way, a representative picture determined by adoption of the method described above may include, for example, both the face of a person and a caption, which are on the display screen at the same time. It is thus quite within the bounds of possibility that such a representative picture suitably represents a recorded program when the genre of the recorded program is news. It is out of the bounds of possibility, however, that such a representative picture meaningfully represents a recorded program when the genre of the recorded program is a movie.
As a result, there is raised a problem that a representative picture determined by adoption of the method described above is not a sufficient means for use by the user to grasp the contents of a program or as a recommended position in determination of a start position of a program.